Western Cree syllabics are a variant of Canadian Aboriginal syllabics

Canadian Aboriginal Syllabics

Canadian Aboriginal syllabic writing, or simply syllabics, is a family of abugidas used to write a number of Aboriginal Canadian languages of the Algonquian, Inuit, and Athabaskan language families....

 used to write Plains Cree

Plains Cree language

Plains Cree is a dialect of the Algonquian language, Cree, which is the most common Canadian indigenous language. Plains Cree is sometimes considered a dialect of the Cree-Montagnais language, or sometimes a dialect of the Cree language, distinct from the Montagnais language...

, Woods Cree

Woods Cree language

Woods Cree is an Algonquian language spoken in Manitoba and Saskatchewan, Canada.It only has 14 letters in the alphabet. There are marked and unmarked letters...

 and the western dialects of Swampy Cree

Swampy Cree language

Swampy Cree is a dialect of the Cree language complex. Swampy Cree is spoken in a series of communities in northern Manitoba, central northeast of Saskatchewan along the Saskatchewan River and along the Hudson Bay coast and adjacent inland areas to the south and west, and Ontario along the coast...

. It is used for all Cree

Cree language

Cree is an Algonquian language spoken by approximately 117,000 people across Canada, from the Northwest Territories and Alberta to Labrador, making it the aboriginal language with the highest number of speakers in Canada. It is also spoken in the U.S. state of Montana...

 dialects west of approximately the Manitoba

Manitoba

Manitoba is a Canadian prairie province with an area of . The province has over 110,000 lakes and has a largely continental climate because of its flat topography. Agriculture, mostly concentrated in the fertile southern and western parts of the province, is vital to the province's economy; other...

–Ontario

Ontario

Ontario is a province of Canada, located in east-central Canada. It is Canada's most populous province and second largest in total area. It is home to the nation's most populous city, Toronto, and the nation's capital, Ottawa....

 border in Canada

Canada

Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...

, as opposed to Eastern Cree syllabics

Eastern Cree syllabics

Eastern Cree syllabics are a variant of Canadian Aboriginal syllabics used to write all the Cree dialects from Moosonee, Ontario to Kawawachikamach on the Quebec–Labrador border in Canada that use syllabics....

. It is also occasionally used by a few Cree speakers in the United States.

Cree syllabics uses different glyph

Glyph

A glyph is an element of writing: an individual mark on a written medium that contributes to the meaning of what is written. A glyph is made up of one or more graphemes....

s to indicate consonants, and changes the orientation of these glyphs to indicate the vowel that follows it. The basic principles of Canadian syllabic writing are outlined in the article for Canadian Aboriginal syllabics

Canadian Aboriginal Syllabics

Canadian Aboriginal syllabic writing, or simply syllabics, is a family of abugidas used to write a number of Aboriginal Canadian languages of the Algonquian, Inuit, and Athabaskan language families....

.

Western syllabics use only those characters needed to write the phonemes of the western dialects. In this article, Cree words and sounds will transcribed using the Standard Roman Orthography used to teach Plains Cree

Plains Cree language

Plains Cree is a dialect of the Algonquian language, Cree, which is the most common Canadian indigenous language. Plains Cree is sometimes considered a dialect of the Cree-Montagnais language, or sometimes a dialect of the Cree language, distinct from the Montagnais language...

.

There are four basic vowels in Plains and Swampy Cree: a, i, e and o. The a, i and o sounds also have long versions: â, î and ô. The vowel e is always long and is written as ê. In Woods Cree, ê has merged with î, so only three basic vowels are used in that dialect. Woods Cree also has the phoneme th /ð/ (the th from the English word that). For more on Cree dialects see the article on the Cree language

Cree language

Cree is an Algonquian language spoken by approximately 117,000 people across Canada, from the Northwest Territories and Alberta to Labrador, making it the aboriginal language with the highest number of speakers in Canada. It is also spoken in the U.S. state of Montana...

.

Standard Roman Orthography consonants sound for the most part like their English equivalents, except that they are never aspirated. (/p/ sounds like the "p" in "spot", not "pea".) The letter c sounds like the "ts" in "bits". Long vowels can be written either with a macron

Macron

A macron, from the Greek , meaning "long", is a diacritic placed above a vowel . It was originally used to mark a long or heavy syllable in Greco-Roman metrics, but now marks a long vowel...

 or a circumflex

Circumflex

The circumflex is a diacritic used in the written forms of many languages, and is also commonly used in various romanization and transcription schemes. It received its English name from Latin circumflexus —a translation of the Greek περισπωμένη...

.

Inventory

Western Cree syllabic character table

Initial	Vowels							Final
	ê [1]	i	o	a	î	ô	â
	ᐁ	ᐃ	ᐅ	ᐊ	ᐄ	ᐆ	ᐋ
p	ᐯ	ᐱ	ᐳ	ᐸ	ᐲ	ᐴ	ᐹ	ᑊ
t	ᑌ	ᑎ	ᑐ	ᑕ	ᑏ	ᑑ	ᑖ	ᐟ
k	ᑫ	ᑭ	ᑯ	ᑲ	ᑮ	ᑰ	ᑳ	ᐠ
c	ᒉ	ᒋ	ᒍ	ᒐ	ᒌ	ᒎ	ᒑ	ᐨ
m	ᒣ	ᒥ	ᒧ	ᒪ	ᒦ	ᒨ	ᒫ	ᒼ
n	ᓀ	ᓂ	ᓄ	ᓇ	ᓃ	ᓅ	ᓈ	ᐣ
s	ᓭ	ᓯ	ᓱ	ᓴ	ᓰ	ᓲ	ᓵ	ᐢ
y	ᔦ	ᔨ	ᔪ	ᔭ	ᔩ	ᔫ	ᔮ	ᐩ (ᐝ) [2]
th [3]	ᖧ	ᖨ	ᖪ	ᖬ	ᖩ	ᖫ	ᖭ	‡ [4]
w [5]	ᐍ	ᐏ	ᐓ	ᐘ	ᐑ	ᐕ	ᐚ	ᐤ
h	ᐦᐁ	ᐦᐃ	ᐦᐅ	ᐦᐊ	ᐦᐄ	ᐦᐆ	ᐦᐋ	ᐦ
hk [6]								ᕽ
l [7]	ᓬ
r [7]	ᕒ

Notes:

[1] The vowel sound ê has merged with î in Woods Cree. In this dialect, syllables containing the vowel î are written with the ê-series characters. For example, ᑫ is /kê/ in Plains Cree, but /kî/ in Woods Cree. Consequently, the î-series is not usually written in Woods Cree.

[2] Final y was originally a raised dot, but was discontinued in favour of ᐩ.

[3] th-series only present in Woods Cree.

[4] Woods Cree usually uses a small double dagger (‡) to indicate a final th, but this character is not in the Unicode standard.

[5] A dot following any syllable indicates that the vowel is preceded by a w, which comes between the initial consonant and the vowel.

[6] hk is a very common consonant cluster at the end of words because it is part of the morpheme used for the locative case

Locative case

Locative is a grammatical case which indicates a location. It corresponds vaguely to the English prepositions "in", "on", "at", and "by"...

. It is used so frequently that it has its own final.

[7] l and r only appear in loan words in western Cree dialects. They may appear before or after a syllable as necessary to indicate the pronunciation of the borrowed word. A Roman Catholic variant has full series for these consonants:

Roman Catholic additions

Initial	Vowels				Final
	ê	i	o	a
r	ᖊ	ᖋ	ᖌ	ᖍ	ᙆ
l	ᕃ	ᕆ	ᕊ	ᕍ	ᔆ

Note that the th-series closely resembles the y-series characters. The th phoneme in Woods Cree appears where a y is found in Plains or an n in Swampy Cree. Recognising the relationship between the th and y sounds, Cree writers use a modification of the y-series.

In addition to these characters, western Cree syllabics indicates the w phoneme by placing a dot after the syllable. (This is the revers of the Eastern Cree

Eastern Cree syllabics

Eastern Cree syllabics are a variant of Canadian Aboriginal syllabics used to write all the Cree dialects from Moosonee, Ontario to Kawawachikamach on the Quebec–Labrador border in Canada that use syllabics....

 convention.) Thus, the syllable wa is indicated with ᐘ, pwi by ᐽ and so on. The dot used to mark the w can be combined with the dot marking length. The syllable wâ is marked as ᐚ and pwî as ᐿ. The dot used to indicate w is placed before the syllable in Eastern Cree syllabics

Eastern Cree syllabics

Eastern Cree syllabics are a variant of Canadian Aboriginal syllabics used to write all the Cree dialects from Moosonee, Ontario to Kawawachikamach on the Quebec–Labrador border in Canada that use syllabics....

. This and the way finals are written are the two principal differences between eastern and western Cree syllabics.

The dot placed above syllables with long vowels is often dropped in real texts unless necessary to disambiguate the word. Long and short vowels may be written identically and require context to disambiguate.

Also, western Cree writers may use the character ᙮ to indicate the end of sentence, instead of the Roman alphabet period so that it is not confused with the diacritic indicating the w sound.

An example of Plains Cree

Plains Cree language

Plains Cree is a dialect of the Algonquian language, Cree, which is the most common Canadian indigenous language. Plains Cree is sometimes considered a dialect of the Cree-Montagnais language, or sometimes a dialect of the Cree language, distinct from the Montagnais language...

 written in western syllabics:

ᑳᒫᒋᐲᑭᐢᒁᑎᑯᐟ ᐆᐦᐃ ᐅᐢᑳᔭ ᐁᓀᐦᐃᔭᐍᔨᐟ᙮ ᒫᑲ ᓇᒨᔭ ᓂᓯᑐᐦᑕᐍᐤ ᐊᐘ ᐅᐢᑭᓂᑮᐢ ᑖᓂᓯ ᐁᐃᑘᔨᐟ ᐋᑕ ᐏᐢᑕ ᐁᓀᐦᐃᔭᐍᐟ᙮

In Standard Roman Orthography:

kâ-mâci-pîkiskwâtikot ôhi oskâya ê-nêhiyawêyit. mâka namôya nisitohtawêw awa oskinikîs tânisi ê-itwêyit âta wîsta ê-nêhiyawêt.

English translation:

The young people then began to speak in the language of his ancestry – Nêhiyawêwin (Plains Cree language). Unfortunately the young man could not make out what they were saying even though he was of the same nation; Nêhiyaw (Plains Cree people).

(Example from http://collections.ic.gc.ca/tales/Creeway.htm.)

External links

• Cree syllabics at languagegeek.com (Website has downloadable Unicode syllabics fonts)